


In the Background of your Best Stories

by ManukaHoney



Category: Outer Banks (TV)
Genre: Attempted Rape/Non-Con, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, JJ (Outer Banks) Needs a Hug, M/M, Protective John B. Routledge, Topper isn't a complete dick
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-11
Updated: 2020-10-30
Packaged: 2021-03-07 16:13:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26950468
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ManukaHoney/pseuds/ManukaHoney
Summary: He licked his lips before pushing forward, trying to explain it to John B.The joint rolls loosely between his fingers as he fidgets, traces his index finger over the side before trading hands and doing the same with his opposite finger.“But then there’s this other world where Luke and my uncles and Kooks and fucking everyone in-between will kick my teeth in if I give them a chance, and that’s just how shit happens.”
Relationships: JJ & John B. Routledge, JJ & Kiara & Pope & John B. Routledge, JJ & Topper (Outer Banks), JJ/John B. Routledge
Comments: 34
Kudos: 201





	1. Chapter 1

Not a lot of shit had ever made much sense to JJ.

He was used to not understanding things that everyone else around him just sort of implicitly knew, like how to look at a bunch of weird symbols on a page and see letters, and how to combine groups of letters into words and then sentences and do it all quickly enough to read a page without pausing. Or parents. He didn’t understand, in elementary school, why other kids in his class went home as soon as the bell rang, instead of going to the beach or the basketball courts, because going home meant getting hurt but going to the beach meant being left alone. He didn’t understand why his teachers would make him stay in at recess for swearing or hitting some other kid who wouldn’t shut up, when that’s how his dad always made him shut up, and no one ever made _him_ stay in at recess.

By the time he started slowly, _slowly_ realising why he was different to the other kids, he figured it was too late to bother trying to catch up.

So yeah, he never understood _shit_ about adults, or reading, or almost anything else. 

But he was from The Cut, so he understood the ocean. Water had always made sense to him, in a way that nothing else ever did.

Once, when John B asked him about it, he’d lit up another joint and smoked half of it before trying to explain what it was like in his head- it took him a while to find the right words. They’d never been his best skillset.

“It’s like… you remember when that substitute made me move my desk out into the hall cause she thought I was too loud?”

John B snorted.

“JJ, dude, you know I love you, but you’re alwaysfucking loud in class.”

“Yeah, but she was a real bitch about it. Anyway, remember how she got up in my face and asked me _what part of stay in your seat and be quiet_ did I not get?”

John B smiled, then, remembering how hard he’d had to clench his jaw shut to stop himself from laughing when he’d watched JJ, in all his rambunctious earnestness, try to give her an honest answer.

“ _Any part of it,”_ he mimicked, in his best, high-pitched imitation of fifth-grade JJ. _“I don’t get why everyone else can do it and I don’t get why it’s important to you.”_

“To be fair, she couldn’t explain either of them, man.”

“And it _still_ took them another year to give you a 505 instead of just adding more detentions.”

He smiled, or winced, wasn’t sure which, as he exhaled smoke from deep in his chest.

“Yeah.” His eyes slipped close, head tilting back to lean against the bed frame, savouring the easy, mellowed feel from the weed. He licked his lips before pushing forward, trying to explain it to John B.

"I still don’t get it. Any of it. I mean, it’s like living in two different worlds with two different sets of rules, and in one world, I have to read and shut up and show up to detention and get my name checked off.”

The joint rolls loosely between his fingers as he fidgets, traces his index finger over the side before trading hands and doing the same with his opposite finger.

“And then there’s this other world where Luke and my uncles and Kooks and fucking everyone in-between will kick my teeth in if I give them a chance, and that’s just how shit happens.”

He opens his eyes, just a bit, and John B’s staring at him, attentive and comprehending in a way JJ never is. And John B doesn’t live with someone like Luke, so he can never _really_ get it, but he’s from The Cut too, so he can maybe, _kind of_ get where JJ’s coming from.

“But half the time I don’t know when to be in which world. And what rules to follow when I don’t know which world I’m in. The ocean’s its own world, bro, and I know when I’m there, and I get it. Like how we don’t surf when a flock of seagulls are flying low near the water for a while, cause it means they’re probably following a shark. Or we don’t wear reflective shorts that could look like scales to a predator. That shit makes sense.”

John B pulls the joint out of his hands and starts sucking down the last of it himself. After exhaling his first hit, he doesn’t say anything, but he reaches over and lets his hand fall over JJ’s forearm, rubbing his thumb up and down a couple of times before leaving it still and keeping it there.

……………………..

Somewhere in the back of his head, alarm bells are ringing out to him, urging him to leave.

At least, he thinks they’re alarm bells- they could just as easily be a sign of head trauma, or maybe he’s just finally cracked it. Fallen off whatever ledge he’s been dangling one foot over as long as he can remember. Wherever the bells are coming from, they’re drowning out the sounds of The Boneyard, all the thumping music and relentless voices of teenagers yelling over each other, and it’s nice.

The ringing in his ears and hazy malleability that came from whatever bottle had been shoved into his hand a half hour earlier are enough to just about take him away from everything.

The bruises on his neck. The surge of adrenaline in his legs and hands when a man built like his uncle catches his eye. The overwhelming weight of a body against his own, pressing him back into a wall and the teeth mouthing an inch below his ear.

A part of him knows he should be shoving, swinging, yelling. 

Another part, one that’s been conditioned by years of playing dead on his kitchen floor and in his childhood bed, a part that he’ll hate himself for after it passes, encourages him to go limp, drift away and let it be. Like that Beatles song John B’s dad used to play around the chateau when they were kids.

It’s going to be fine, and he barely even has to convince himself.

He’ll live. He always does.

_Let it be._

His legs aren’t really holding him up, anymore, but he hasn’t crumpled on the floor or anything.

He’s not a pussy.

Or maybe it’s just cause he’s pressed so hard against the wall, sandwiched between wooden cabin and someone’s body. His head lolls, and he can’t really support it anymore so he doesn’t try. The ringing is getting louder, the fog clouding over more and more conscious thought and he doesn’t have the energy to try to figure out what’s going on.

There are hands running up and down his ribs, then his hips, and then there are fingers trying to undo the button on the front of his shorts, unsteady fingers fumbling once and he wonders, momentarily, if the man in front of him had decided to get drunk for this so it would alleviate some of his guilt.

As quickly as it came, the thought floats away and he doesn’t try to grab hold of it.

Switch off. Still. Silent.

Slip away so they can’t touch you anywhere it counts.

It’s worked before, and it’ll work again.

There’s something warm trickling down the side of his face, from his temple, he thinks, but he isn’t sure why. Doesn’t remember hitting his head. Something about that doesn’t sit right in his mind, like maybe he should stop and figure out what happened to his had. But the thought doesn’t translate into the urgent feeling it’s probably supposed to. 

The man’s hips are pressed up against his own, and he can feel him grinding against his thigh, feel his hands everywhere he doesn’t want them, trying to get him hard or maybe taking some perverse satisfaction in the fact that he isn’t.

He’s clinging to the hazy, clouded fog in his head for as long as he can. 

He knows what comes when it breaks, and he doesn’t want to get there yet. So he doesn’t. 

His head lulls, his limbs give out even further, he falls as deep into his own head as he can get.

There’s some noise that he can make out over the ringing in in his ears, loud enough and sharp enough to cut through the bells and he wants it to _shut the fuck up._ Something happens in front of him, too quick or too slow for him to make sense of it, he isn’t really sure which, but it happens.

And then, somehow, the man isn’t in front of him anymore, at least as far as JJ can tell. Instead, he’s on the ground, and someone familiar is on top of him, throwing punches and screaming and JJ- he doesn’t like screaming. By the time the crazed, rage-fuelled voice registers in his brain, slicing right through the clouds and numbness and jarring him violently out of his protective disconnect, he’s on the floor.

Concrete, maybe.

And his legs and arms are instantly flooded with so much adrenaline he can’t hep but jerk violently back, like he’s having some kind of involuntary seizure, chest seizing up and stomach clenching and a single, choked scream tearing itself from his mouth.

As soon as he hears it, he shoves a wrist into his mouth, bites down to stop himself from screaming again. 

His head’s spinning around faster it usually is, a single, unbroken line of _“Don’t be a pussy, don’t be a pussy,”_ rattling against his skull as he tries to calm the fuck down. 

It doesn’t work.

Then there’s a body crouching in front of him, different to the one that was pinning him to the wall, keeping a good few metres between them with his hands help up the way people do when they’re trying to calm down an unhinged criminal on a cop show or trying to clam down JJ when he’s being JJ.

When his eyes catch on the person’s face and he recognises the clean-cut look of _kook,_ and then realises it’s _Topper,_ his brain doesn’t really know how to handle it.

Topper’s saying something, and he can hear the sounds, but he can’t translate them into words, or give them any meaning, like when he tries to read. 

He wants to tell him to _shut the fuck up,_ that he can’t fucking hear him, because he _can’t_ and that’s freaking him out more than the body of Him on the floor, lying just several metres away.

Topper moves toward him, just edging closer, hesitantly, his eyes wide and scared and and searching for his own, like he’s freaked out and trying not to be for JJ’s sake.

_He must be pretty fucked up if Topper’s being careful with him_

He’s pretty sure he’s supposed to be flinching away at this point- not wanting anyone close to him, or something, but instead, he just wants Topper to be closer to him than the man lying sprawled on the pavement. Wants to feel less like he’s exposed, out in the open and vulnerable.

Topper’s moving closer, slowly, and when he can hold eye contact with the guy for more than a second, Topper holds his gaze, still talking to him. The words are starting to fall into place, slowly, static-like, but it’s something.

“JJ. Look at me, dude, you’re good. There you go, man, _easy_ …”

He wants to reply, let him know he’s _fine,_ but his voice isn’t working, so he just nods, once. Topper looks relieved, moves a bit closer. 

“Hey, stay with me, I don’t have John B’s number, okay?”

There’s no way in hell _he_ can remember a number at that moment, and he has to blink back tears at how fucking frustrating that is and how fucking scared he still is.

Apparently Topper sees anyway, and it’s not a reassuring sign for how JJ must be looking that he doesn’t take the piss for it.

“Fuck. I’ll call Sarah, she can find John B, is that alright, man?”

He nods, again, doesn’t know why he can’t verbalise anything.

For all he knows, John B could be hooking up with some Touron all the way back at the Chateau now, but he kind of really fucking needs him. 

“Alright, dude, it’s gonna be okay.”

And then Topper’s talking to someone on his fucking expensive looking phone that he probably didn’t even have to steal, and JJ doesn’t want to hear what Topper comes out with.

He lets himself float, keeps his eyes on Topper’s body so doesn’t look at the only other body around them.

Eventually, he doesn’t know how long, doesn’t have a decent concept of time when he’s not fucked out on adrenaline and even less so now, he hears John B’s calling out as he rounds the corner. He’s still pressed back against the wall and his hands won’t uncurl from fists and he’s hovering just close enough to the surface that he knows he’s in danger of cracking open and crying like a pussy or worse at any second.

The way his stomach and chest tighten in relief at the fact that John B’s here is overwhelming.

John B sprints over to him, coming to kneel in front of him, one hand on his shoulder and another on his bicep, the easy contact that they’d always had pulling him back to the world around him.

He tries to hold it together, breathe deeply and all that shit. 

“ _JJ,_ talk to me, are you okay?” 

He hears the panic in John B’s tone and feels guilt settle heavily in his chest. His fingers finally uncurl, reaching out to grab at John B as awareness tries to pry him back. He doesn’t want to be back, yet. It’s not going to be pretty when he is.

John B pulls him in close, and he clings to him, tries to stop shaking. He doesn’t even give a fuck that Topper can see them. 

“Come on Bubba, you’re okay. I’ve got you. Easy.”

He’s pretty sure he’s crying. John B’s holding him closer, now, but he sounds like he’s talking to Topper.

“What the fuck happened? He can’t talk, _Jesus._ ”

He wants to tell him he’s okay, but he can’t, so he keeps his arms wrapped around John B and waits for his voice to come back.

It doesn't.

The rest of the night is disjointed as he tunes in and out, awareness flickering like a strobe light in a maze.

In one moment, John B’s helping him stand, dragging him up and draping his arm across his shoulders to take most of his weight. Then, Topper’s walking in front of them, pushing through the crowd while he tries to make his feet cooperate with John B’s path. John B pulling a hoodie over his head, probably because he’s still shaking. 

John B has always been the one to see JJ at his worst moments, the ones he doesn’t want anyone else around for. He’s pretty sure this is going to be one of them.

He falls asleep shaking, clinging, his jaw locked shut and eyes burning, the feeling of John B's fingers carding through his hair while he talks slowly drawing him closer back to safety.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope the universe is treating everyone with love.  
> Take three for the sea and protect our oceans =)
> 
> Snuffles is a true story.   
> If you enjoy this even a bit, please feel free to leave a comment, because they bring me so much excitement =) Much love to everyone.

Pope and Kie have both told him that he’s the only one who can pull JJ back from the ledge when he’s about to lose his tenuous hold on control. 

He’s pretty sure they’re full of shit; he’s the only one to successfully calm JJ down because he’s the only one who’s ever really bothered to try. 

John B loves them both, would trust either of them with just about anything, but he thinks there’s always going to be this separation between them- this bond that’s always going to tighten just a little bit more around JJ and himself than the remaining Pogues, when shit hits the fan. 

He knows why JJ runs off a cliff every now and then, and he knows what it feels like, because he’s been there. They were fifteen when it happened- John B fifteen and a half, JJ just barely fifteen, when they’d gone scuba diving with equipment stolen from the Wreck and a spear gun that JJ brought  _ “Just in case of sharks, John B.”  _

JJ was more at ease in the water than he ever was on land. 

JJ would free dive for fish and oysters and float down to the ocean surface like he was called toward it, and when they were younger, John B will admit that he was jealous of how JJ could make the water his home, like that.

He dropped the jealousy as soon as he was old enough to realise just how badly JJ’s home life fucked with him emotionally, how frequently he would flinch and migrate toward the nearest exit in any room, like he could never feel safe in his own  _ skin.  _

JJ was more at ease in the water than John B would ever be, but that was the  _ only  _ place he was at ease. 

The fact that JJ was more freaked out by anyone bigger than himself who stood too closely than he was by the prospect of a bull-shark taking a bite out of his leg… said a lot.

They’d dropped an anchor on HMS Pogue, dove down in ten metre increments, and John B was fine. He knew the equipment, the water, the technique of cleaning his mask while still in the water. He was fine.

And then they’d hit twenty-five metres, and in a sudden and completely unanticipated event that shocked both of them, John B had panicked.

It wasn’t pretty. It sure as shit wasn’t rational. 

It was terrifying. Within a window of several seconds, maybe less, he went from descending in an easy, stoic state to feeling the sharp surge of stress hormones crash through his body like a tsunami, blanking his head and sending him flailing in the water.

All he could focus on was the way his body and brain were screaming at him to get to the surface-to get the  _ fuck  _ out of the water and into a place with oxygen and solid ground. It was the most overwhelming, sickening sense of horror and survival-instinct he’d ever experienced, and before he could think about decompression sickness or  _ anything  _ remotely rational, he was trying to thrash his way to the surface.

He’d made it maybe a foot upward when he felt arms wrap around his torso and yank him back, pinning him to JJ’s own body, trapping him underwater. JJ was fighting to keep a grip on him, and in the haze of terror and impulse, he struck out at him with one hand, maybe both. 

He still feels his stomach tighten when he remembers that bit now, the way he’d been so out of his head that he’d hit JJ as he held him down, because he doesn’t even pin JJ when they’re wrestling on the Chateau floor or push JJ off HMS Pogue from behind, the way he does with Pope. 

JJ talks a big game, and he can fight just as well as John B, when he really needs to, but JJ can’t even handle adults raising their voices around him without his hands shaking. JJ startles at the sound of a cabinet swinging shut. 

He’s always careful not to scare JJ, even when he knows it pisses him off, and John B snapped off at him underwater without thinking about it.

But JJ hadn’t even flinched enough to get out of the way of his limbs, unwilling to risk losing his grip enough to let John B fight his way to the surface. 

John B’s eyes had been flickering around frantically, but when they finally landed on JJ’s, he didn’t see any panic there. JJ’s pupils might have been blown to shit, the only sign that this was terrifying for JJ, but he schooled his face into this calm, almost serene expression. 

His eyes locked onto JJ’s, and JJ had looked at him intently and softly and kept one hand cupped on his left shoulder, reassuring and pinning him down in the water all at once, while his other hand reached for his jaw, tilting his face toward his own.

(Later, John B would take the piss out of that, tell JJ he looked like he was confessing his love for him and JJ would ham it up, tackling him to the ground and dramatically kissing him on the cheek and they laughed until their sides hurt. John B loved him for letting it be that easy.)

JJ looked just as calm in the water as he always did, breathing easily and keeping John B close enough and reassured enough to start breathing slower. They’d gone straight back up, ascending slowly enough and stopping enough times that when they finally resurfaced and clambered back onto HMS Pogue, they weren’t bent, and their nitrogen levels, as far as he could tell, were mostly fine. 

They hadn’t said anything for a few minutes, both panting and trying to resettle from the adrenaline and the exhaustion, and JJ hadn’t broken contact with him the entire time, even when they were back on the boat.

(When they told the story, later, JJ would tell Pope and Kie that he’d  _ pussied out at like three metres, guys,  _ and John B would flip him off and say  _ I got water in my mask and JJ clawed me to the ground like a fucking crocodile, I swear,  _ and they’d all find it hilarious and neither of them would mention the fear, the unedited reality to the other two because that was between them.)

John B is going to remember that flood of fear and panic for his entire life, he’s sure of it, and he’s going to remember the feeling of JJ’s hands holding him down and the calmness JJ had mustered when he couldn’t find his own, for just as long.

It’s been just over a year since that dive, and they’ve dived a hundred times since then, and JJ never held that panicked freak-out against him even once. 

It’s been just over a year and they’ve gotten through his Dad disappearing, their sophomore year of high school, JJ’s mom showing up for a week and fucking JJ’s head up even worse before splitting in the middle of the night,  _ again.  _

JJ flinches even more at loud noises and sudden movements and John B doesn’t like storms anymore and they’ve gotten through it all together, like they always do.

Sometimes (maybe too often to be called ‘sometimes’), JJ explodes in front of them. Runs off a cliff. Runs his fingers through his hair and grips and  _ pulls;  _ shouts and storms out of the room when he can’t handle being asked something and doesn’t have the words to just _ tell them that.  _

And in those moments, when leaving JJ alone doesn’t look like the best course of action for whatever reason, John B reaches out for him. He’ll sling an arm over JJ’s shoulder, wrap an arm around his torso and whisper  _ “easy, J,”  _ if it’s a minor event. Sometimes, he’ll hold out an arm and JJ will just sort of loosely hug into him at a party at the Boneyard, breathing deliberately and John B will just keep talking to a Touron or one of the Pogues or even a Kook, like it’s nothing out of the ordinary.

(Pope and Kie don’t do that. When JJ’s about to explode, they’ll get nervous, tell him to  _ calm down  _ in hushed, fast tones and start looking around for John B. They’re not  _ bad friends,  _ but they don’t have the same calmness that JJ can adopt in the water or that John B can adopt around a frantic JJ.)

John B knows, right down to the nervous edge in his legs when he walks into JJ’s house that always tells him to  _ run,  _ that when JJ explodes, it’s nothing to do with choice and  _ everything  _ to do with panic, just like it was when he panicked twenty-five metres under the ocean surface.

……………….

When he first rounded the corner and caught sight of Topper, crouched near a crumpled JJ, he saw red.

JJ took enough hits at his dad’s house, was scared enough and flighty enough already, even without kooks like Topper cornering him in alleys.

Then he’d realised that Topper wasn’t attacking JJ, and he’d recognised the scared, almost desperate look on his face- the same one he’d seen in his own reflection in the bathroom mirror when JJ came over semi-conscious and coughed up blood on the Chateau couch.

The fact that Topper, a kook who had held onto some fucked up grudge against the Pogues for as long as he’d known the guy, was  _ scared  _ for JJ, was trying to placate him while a guy lay unconscious and bloodied on the ground next to him….

He didn’t know what happened, at that point, but he’d known it had to be fucking bad.

JJ hadn’t said a word since they got back to the Chateau.

That was enough to make him hold on a bit tighter, keep JJ closer to him in itself, because there are just some kinds of quiet that feel  _ wrong.  _

There’s a difference between  _ quiet  _ and  _ silent. _

_ Quiet  _ is a school exam room, or an awkward pause when someone’s asked a question they don’t feel comfortable answering, but have to be diplomatic about it.

_ Silent  _ is the unnerving sense of walking into a room and feeling like something bad is in there, but having no ability to articulate why.

Silence, from someone like JJ, is terrifying.

………

There are a lot of things he knows about JJ that gnaw at his stomach on nights like this one; nights when JJ is shaken and freshly traumatised and wearing John B’s thickest hoodie and chain smoking with shaking hands.

During the day, it’s easier to take it in his stride, getting caught up in the whirlwind of laughter and rough-housing and  _ running away  _ from whatever crime JJ had just committed, caught up in the best parts of poverty and child neglect.

Those moments hold at least half of his favorite memories, maybe more, and he sometimes thinks that JJ pulls reckless stunts like he does because he needs  _ something  _ high-stakes enough to pull his attention into the present, and away from whatever was happening at his house.

The year before his dad went missing, this mangled sea-lion had been picked up by two fisherman from the Outer Banks. 

It had been half-dead at the time and no one really thought it’d make it out alive, but the community had rallied around and nursed it back to health at a marine rescue centre that usually didn’t look after anything bigger than fish and the occasional octopus.

They’d named him Snuffles. Even now, no one really knows who chose the name or why, but somewhere along the line, this battered-looking sea lion became Snuffles, and it stuck. 

Eventually, nearly two months after being rescued from a fishing net off the coast of North Carolina, Snuffles was healthy enough to be released into the ocean, and half the island had stood, huddled together on the shore at seven in the morning, to watch.

Snuffles had been lowered into the ocean by a structure that sort of resembled a miniature crane, looking curiously at the spectators as they cheered him on from the sand. 

John B could remember how excited JJ was, seeing that. JJ loved marine life. 

The sea-lion was lowered into the ocean for three and a half seconds, and then, like a scene out of a horror movie, this three-metre long, white shark launched itself out of the water and swallowed Snuffles in a single bite. 

No one had even seen a dorsal fin in the water. 

They’d all stood, shocked, feet glued to the shoreline like it was quicksand, and John B could remember that JJ was standing next to him the whole time, like he always was.

It sounds kind of stupid, in hindsight, because everyone on the island knows that the ocean is just as brutal as it is breathtaking, but still. They fucking loved that sea lion.

John B’s phone is lying somewhere near his feet, and JJ is curled up next to him, one hand brushing against his bicep the way JJ only does when he’s more asleep than not. 

An audiobook about sailing is playing in the background, and he’s only half listening, but he’s picked up that it’s about an American guy who sold his house and quit his job in some spur-of-the-moment, mid-life crisis, before buying a boat and setting off to single-handedly circumnavigate the world.

The  _ Audible  _ account belongs to Kie.

The Pogues would probably owe her hundreds of dollars each if she charged them for all of her accounts they use, so he doesn’t say anything when all the recommendations and targeted ads are about sea turtles and plastic pollution.

He doesn’t really care which audiobook plays, in all honesty; he only bothers with it because of JJ. 

JJ doesn’t sleep well on his own. 

He’s never said as much, because he doesn’t need to, and because the times when he’s crashed on the couch instead of John B’s bed have sort of spoken for themselves. 

On those nights, John B’s woken up to him checking the locks on all the doors and windows in the Chateau, checking in cupboards and switching on whatever lamp he could find along the way.

JJ doesn’t like sleeping alone, and he can’t fall asleep in silence. 

On these nights, JJ looks just like that sea-lion, to John B, and it scares the shit out of him.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> I hope the world is treating you with love.  
> Thank you for reading this, I really hope you enjoyed it a bit.  
> I'd love to hear what you think, all comments bring me a lot of joy. xx


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